The octopus
The twenty-ninth lunar day is the most feared of the four satanic days, and the one Zaraev rates most useful. Local times are below.
- Runs from the twenty eighth moonrise after the new Moon
- Satanic day
- Right now, lunar day
P. Globa, Avestan Lunar Calendar, and the short table that circulates from it. Tradition, not a measured effect.
What Globa says
The most feared day in the tradition, and a bacchanalia of devils in the text.
The symbol is an octopus, with the many-headed Hydra beside it in the book: many arms, many heads, nothing you can face in one direction. The instruction is to do only the most necessary everyday things, cut false connections and drive away bad thoughts. Burn candles and fumigate the rooms with Labrador tea. Avoid turbid water and darkness, and avoid objects made of bone and horn. The food is baked, pies and pancakes, and the day ends with washing and a cold foot bath before sleep.
The book calls this the day a person meets the prince of darkness, Lucifer as the stealer of light and of khvarenah, and the day of the battle between Spenta Mainyu and Angra Mainyu. That is genuine Zoroastrian vocabulary bolted onto a Christian frame, which is the whole system in one sentence. The book adds a rule this site can check: if a month has no thirtieth day, next month's satanic days are said to hit at full strength.
- 01Do only what must be doneEveryday necessities, nothing chosen, nothing new.
- 02Burn a candle, air the roomsCandles and fumigation with Labrador tea are the named practice.
- 03Wash before sleepingA wash and a cold foot bath close the day.
Screams, a trumpet call, or drawn-out musical sounds are read as a warning that you are on the wrong road.
Where the sources disagree
Four author lines stand behind the lunar days and they are not one tradition. They run left to right in the order they were written, oldest first, and each one carries its date. This site names which line it is quoting every time.
Albertus Magnus
Medieval, before 1500
Unlucky, but the sick recover
Unlucky for everything, and yet the sick recover. Dreams come true in three days, and those born today are short lived.
The medieval lunary carried under his name. The attribution is traditional and not proven.
Sergei Vronsky
1915 to 1998
Unlucky in everything, start nothing
Vronsky calls it thoroughly unlucky in everything and for everything: start nothing, it will go crooked and cost you time for nothing. Dreams are very truthful and may come true after three days, and the child does not live long without outside help or good Jupiter or Venus aspects in the chart.
Classical Astrology, volume 4. His text is the old lunary in modern prose, and carries no symbols.
Pavel Globa
Born 1953
The worst of the satanic days.
The reading above is his. The thirty symbols, the satanic days, the stones and the omens all come from this line.
Avestan Lunar Calendar, and the school that follows it.
Alexander Zaraev
Born 1954
Best window of the month, first half
Zaraev puts the best hours of the month in the first half of this day: patronage, protection and support from partners and from higher forces, with spiritual orientation and foresight rising, and he calls it the most favourable window of all for changing your fate. The second half turns, with falling vitality, depression, and risk of illness, deception and injury.
His circulating texts carry no symbols and are pegged to the phase aspects instead.
The day Globa fears most contains, for Zaraev, the best few hours of the entire month for changing your fate. They are describing the same hours, and one of them tells you to lock the door.
A distinction Globa's own book makes and English pages lose
Satanic, and not the same as dark
Two different sets of difficult days get mixed into one.
The satanic days are the ninth, the fifteenth, the twenty third and the twenty ninth, and this is one of them. The days of Hecate are a different set: the dark days around the new Moon, when the Moon is not in the sky at all. English pages use the two names as if they meant the same thing. The book does not.
Set out in full on the sources page
How old is this
Old in part, and much younger than it is said to be.
Books of lunar days circulated in Europe from the twelfth century, and the Albertus and Vronsky lines sit in that tradition. The thirty symbols in their present form, and the satanic days, are a twentieth century Russian arrangement presented as ancient Persian. That claim is asserted and not documented.
Calculated in your browser, and true to the minute for the city at the top
How the day is counted
Lunar days are not equal, and they do not begin at midnight.
The first runs from the exact moment of the new Moon to the next moonrise where you are, and is usually short. Every day after that runs from one moonrise to the next, about twenty four hours and fifty minutes. A lunation holds twenty nine or thirty of them.
Because moonrise depends on where you stand, the lunar day is the one figure on this site that genuinely differs between two cities on the same evening.
The next four twenty ninth lunar days
| Begins | Time | Ends | Time | Lasts |
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All thirty lunar days
The hours of this lunar day come from the new Moon and from the moonrises in the city named at the top, worked out in your browser with an open astronomy library.
The lunary attributed to Albertus Magnus; S. Vronsky, Classical Astrology, volume 4; P. Globa, Avestan Lunar Calendar; A. Zaraev. Every claim on this page carries the author it comes from.
None of the readings is a measured effect, and where the authors disagree this site says so rather than choosing for you.